The present invention relates generally to the field of molding elastomeric articles, and more particularly to apparatus for loading the mold cavities of a multi-cavity mold with respective molding inserts, simultaneously.
Conventional molds often are provided with many cavities for curing elastomeric stock in the form of the cavities. The cavities often number as much as fifty cavities and sometimes considerably more. Associated with each of these cavities are various inserts for imparting to each of the cavities a preferred configuration or form into which elastomeric stock or compound is to be shaped and cured. As a result, each of the cavities must be loaded with respective ones of the inserts, and this is done conventionally by hand, one at at time.
The aforementioned hand-loading of the mold cavities with respective inserts is clearly a time consuming operation, and must be effected after each and every heat or molding cycle.
Another disadvantage associated with the hand-loading operation aforementioned is that the operator in charge of loading each of the cavities with inserts sometimes succumbs to human error and fails to load each and every cavity with a respective insert or with the proper insert. This results not only in the loss of one or more molded products in the course of a given heat or molding cycle, but it also results in the need to clean the insert-retainer plate of the mold after emptying the other properly cured molded products therefrom.